62% of the most successful companies regularly move the sales process up the ladder to senior decision makers who have more at stake than lower-level buyers.
This means that everyone else is talking to the wrong people…the people who have less at stake, and less decision-making authority (and sometimes none at all!).

There are three primary levels of buyers in business-to-business selling:

• Level 3s, at the bottom, are people with titles like Manager or Supervisor. If they have buying authority, they really buy on avoidance of risk – will it make their personal life any easier?
• Level 2s, in the middle, have titles like Director or VP, and they typically buy on implementation and getting results.
• Level 1s, at the top, are CEOs, COOs, Presidents, and Senior VPs. These are the people responsible for guiding a company, and they typically have tremendous buying power.

If you can sell to a Level 1, and convince him or her that your product or service will help the company achieve a strategic goal, you’ll likely get the business! You’ve got to find ways to communicate to Level 1 prospects in the language that they understand.

(Statistics came from an archived article: “Overcoming price objections: What top execs do differently” What’s Working in Sales Management April 16, 2004).

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